Friday, February 17, 2006

A Wedding and a Funeral

Last night, there was all of this noise in the street. I imagined that it had to be a wedding, so I went outside (armed with a camera) and caught a couple of blocks of the procession to a house in the neighborhood. There was lots of singing. I stayed around until the part where the bride sits in a howdah (or is it a palanquin when the thing is carried by people and not by animals? Is it an issue of scale, or of means of conveyance?) and is danced around with a bit.

Today, when I was on my way to my weekly dose of couscous, there was what seemed to be a parade of men at the top of Mohammed el-Khaamis (the street off of which I live.) The cemetery is up that way; it was a funeral. I didn't want to walk up by all of the mourners, so I took the roads within the medina for a couple of blocks, but when I exited the medina they were still all proceeding (I walked faster than they did, I think. Also, there were very many of them.) Traffic was blocked for a couple of blocks as they walked into the cemetery entrance.